Malta, 1913, and hot air balloons hover over the Grand Harbour. One of them comes down in the water but no one is hurt - except that the balloonist dies later when taken into the Naval Hospital for a check-up. But he is not the only one who had died there unexpectedly, as a letter to The Times points out, and a special investigator, Seymour of the Foreign Office, is sent out from London to find out what is going on. For in 1913 Malta is still a British protectorate, governed by the British; indeed, with its red postboxes, English beer and English language it seems like an exotic Little Britain. But the rumblings of war are reaching out to that small island in the Mediterranean and many of the old Maltese families are becoming divided in their loyalties: at the same time staunchly supportive to the British and yet starting to question Malta's subordinate status and wondering whether the time has come to strike out an independent path for themselves. So the letter to The Times has touched a raw nerve, as Seymour soon finds out: is it a critique of bad nursing practises? Or is there a different, more sinister explanation to these sudden deaths? Praise for Michael Pearce's A Dead Man in . . . series 'The steady pace, atmospheric design, and detailed description re-create a complicated city. A recommended historical series' Library Journal 'Sheer fun' The Times 'His sympathetic portrayal of an unfamiliar culture, impeccable historical detail and entertaining dialogue make enjoyable reading' Sunday Telegraph

Malta, 1913, and hot air balloons hover over the Grand Harbor. But one of them falls from the sky, the balloonist dying later from his injuries. He is not the only one to die unexpectedly at the Naval Hopspital, however, as a letter to The Times points out. Special Investigator Seymour of the Foreign Office is sent out from London to uncover the truth. Malta is still a British protectorate; indeed, with its red post boxes, English beer and English language, it seems like an exotic "Little Britain." But as the rumblings of war reach the small island, many of the old Maltese families are becoming divided in their loyalties, as some start to question Malta's subordinate status and wonder whether the time has come to strike out an independent path for themselves. The letter to The Times has touched a raw nerve, as Seymour soon finds out: is it simply a critique of bad nursing practices? Or is there a different, more sinister explanation to these sudden deaths?

When Luca Valletta's father dies, he inherits a not-so-profitable dry cleaning business in a busy Manhattan neighborhood. Determined to keep the business open, Luca dives into the criminal underbelly of New York, where he begins taking on some very dangerous cleaning jobs. One such job places Luca face-to-face with a dead U.S. Senator who happens to be carrying a familiar business card - the same card Luca's father used to hand out to customers. Determined to find the connection between his father and the dead Senator, Luca travels across the globe, unearthing new pieces of his family's secret past each step along the way.

The Jukebox Queen of Malta is an exquisite and enchanting novel of love and war set on an island perilously balanced between what is real and what is not. It's 1942 and Rocco Raven, an intrepid auto mechanic turned corporal from Brooklyn, has arrived in Malta, a Mediterranean island of Neolithic caves, Copper Age temples, and fortresses. The island is under siege, full of smoke and rubble, caught in the magnesium glare of German and Italian bombs. But nothing is as it seems on Malta. Rocco's living quarters are a brothel; his commanding officer has a genius for turning the war's misfortunes into personal profit; and the Maltese people, astonishingly, testify to the resiliency of the human spirit. When Rocco meets the beautiful and ethereal Melita, who delivers the jukeboxes her cousin builds out of shattered debris, they are drawn to each other by an immediate passion. And, it is their full-blown affair that at once liberates and imprisons Rocco on the island. In this mesmerizing novel, music and bombs, war and romance, the jukebox and the gun exist in arresting counterpoint in a story that is a profound and deeply moving exploration of the redemptive powers of love.

In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, Muslim ruler of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, dispatched an invasion fleet to the Christian island of Rhodes. This would prove to be the opening shot in an epic struggle between rival empires and faiths for control of the Mediterranean and the center of the world. In Empires of the Sea, acclaimed historian Roger Crowley has written his most mesmerizing work to date–a thrilling account of this brutal decades-long battle between Christendom and Islam for the soul of Europe, a fast-paced tale of spiraling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar and features a cast of extraordinary characters: Barbarossa, “The King of Evil,” the pirate who terrified Europe; the risk-taking Emperor Charles V; the Knights of St. John, the last crusading order after the passing of the Templars; the messianic Pope Pius V; and the brilliant Christian admiral Don Juan of Austria. This struggle’s brutal climax came between 1565 and 1571, seven years that witnessed a fight to the finish decided in a series of bloody set pieces: the epic siege of Malta, in which a tiny band of Christian defenders defied the might of the Ottoman army; the savage battle for Cyprus; and the apocalyptic last-ditch defense of southern Europe at Lepanto–one of the single most shocking days in world history. At the close of this cataclysmic naval encounter, the carnage was so great that the victors could barely sail away “because of the countless corpses floating in the sea.” Lepanto fixed the frontiers of the Mediterranean world that we know today. Roger Crowley conjures up a wild cast of pirates, crusaders, and religious warriors struggling for supremacy and survival in a tale of slavery and galley warfare, desperate bravery and utter brutality, technology and Inca gold. Empires of the Sea is page-turning narrative history at its best–a story of extraordinary color and incident, rich in detail, full of surprises, and backed by a wealth of eyewitness accounts. It provides a crucial context for our own clash of civilizations.

'One of the most productive, imaginative and risk-taking of writers... It is a clever, sexually explicit, fast-moving, full blooded yarn' Irish Times A Dead Man in Deptford re-imagines the riotous life and suspicious death of Christopher Marlowe. Poet, lover and spy, Marlowe must negotiate the pressures placed upon him by the theatre, Queen and country. Burgess brings this dazzling figure to life and pungently evokes Elizabethan England. 'A fast, funny, flawless recreation' Hilary Mantel See also: Earthly Powers

In his second book of narrative, lyric poetry, Richard Blanco explores the familiar, unsettling journey for home and connections, those anxious musings about other lives: ÒShould I live here? Could I live here?Ó Whether the exotic (ÒIÕm struck with Maltese fever ÉI dream of buying a little Maltese farmÉ) or merely different (ÒToday, home is a cottage with morning in the yawn of an open windowÉÓ), he examines the restlessness that threatens from merely staying put, the fear of too many places and too little time. The words are redolent with his Cuban heritage: Marina making mole sauce; T’a Ida bitter over the revolution, missing the sisters who fled to Miami; his father, especially, Òhis hair once as black as the black of his oxfordsÉÓ Yet this is a volume for all who have longed for enveloping arms and words, and for that sanctuary called home. ÒSo much of my life spent like this-suspended, moving toward unknown places and names or returning to those I know, corresponding with the paradox of crossing, being nowhere yet here.Ó Blanco embraces juxtaposition. There is the Cuban Blanco, the American Richard, the engineer by day, the poet by heart, the rhythms of Spanish, the percussion of English, the first-world professional, the immigrant, the gay man, the straight world. There is the ennui behind the question: why cannot I not just live where I live? Too, there is the precious, fleeting relief when he can write "ÉI am, for a moment, not afraid of being no more than what I hear and see, no more than this:..." It is what we all hope for, too.

The fifth exciting crime novel in Michael Pearce's Dead Man series.

"The finest writer of sea-stories in the English language."--J. de Courcy Ireland